after 6 months in Bangkok and getting sick every month, I told my thai wife that I can't here. she'd been to hua hin many times and said that she liked it there. we came for a weekend, found a house to rent and have been here for 3 years.

We travelled all over Thailand to find the best place to retire. We liked Chiang Mai but we didn't really want to live in a big city. Also, I always liked living near the ocean so we checked out southern beach towns like Koh Samui, Krabi, Phuket, and the area around Pattaya. Those were all too big or too touristy. At the very last we went to Hua Hin. It was the perfect mix of quiet small town with a few expats, restaurants and bars, good golf, a small smattering of regular European tourists and snowbirds and much lower prices for nearly everything than the more touristy places. It seemed perfect... but that description only lasted about a year after we moved there. Then the rapid growth, development, and inflation started.

My brain is like an Internet browser; 12 tabs are open and 5 of them are not responding, there's a GIF playing in an endless loop,... and where is that annoying music coming from?

I love your good comment Nererus but just as hhfarang wrote; a year after we moved there something happened!
What happened was the tragic Tsunami / earthquake outside Indonesia in December 2004.
In 2005, when Phuket was down in ruins, suddenly Hua Hin was invaded by tourists.
That is what happened and that's when all the changes started.
A rather small, sleepy, friendly fisher town changed suddenly within a time-frame of only two years and it's just not the place I where I want to live. So I moved.
And so did hhfarang.

I was having a house built on the Sukumvit Road outside of Pattaya. We were living in Nong Kaam and a friend in the UK told us about Hua Hin. We came here for the weekend and fell in love with the place. That was 15 years ago and now it's nothing like the place we fell for. However, we've adjusted and still enjoying life.

I spent the first 10 years in Thailand living on Koh Tao working in and around the diving industry. Great times but business was taking me more and more to Bangkok. A few days was fine but when the trips were 2 weeks I decided that I needed an alternative so started basing in Hua Hin whilst waiting for the print runs. I have friends here whom I would stay with in Tubtai. Liked the place and was offered a job for a year contract. 6 months later I purchased land as an investment and designed a house. A year later I built it. For the first few months I lived a single life and had a good look around. The town is not the same with many new, welcome IMO features such as shopping centres, decent restaurants, activities. 2-3 hours from Bangkok and the same for decent beaches, although there are many much closer but I like to snorkel and fish, made it an ideal choice for me. I considered Kanchanaburi but found it too quiet. Pattaya was never on the menu.

So for those of you considering Hua Hin I can honestly say I am happy here with the weather, the locals and pretty much everything apart from those women who disturb a well earned cold beer by demonstrating those irritating wooden frogs and having to listen to very poor dance music at nosebleed volume levels

By accident! We had to leave Pattaya - spent a while in Bangkok trying to decide where to go next. Considered Chiang Mai but really wanted a beach place. then an expat friend had a bank holiday off and gave us a lift as far as HH and that was it!

We stopped in Hua Hin for a few days 11 years ago.
After travelling the world together for 20+ years I had stopped asking my wife where she wanted to live.
3 days after arrival she said she could live in Hua Hin, a year later we had a house.
She actually likes the large town/small city feel, although we live approximately half way between Hua Hin and Cha Am and that gives us peace and quiet when we want it, whilst we can easily hit either place as we see fit.

My story is similar to HHfarang, Norseman and Migrant however the dates are a little earlier! First came to Hua Hin in 1997 and settled then after touring the rest of Thailand, approaching the millennium it was still a laid back, friendly and cheap place to live; no traffic, and no police, work or immigration hassles. There was one ATM and one internet cafe back in those days! Bars could open 24 hours and the number of permanent expats was around 200.

Things started to change after the tsunami and property/price boom from 2005-2008, from then on the place was never the same for us so we moved south. That said I still like to visit Hua Hin for a few days every couple of months.

Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed? - Hunter S ThompsonGet out there: On The Road Asia

I first visited Hua Hin in January 2000 for a week en route back to the UK from Oz. Been visiting regularly since and have long considered it a place to retire to, although I preferred the sleepier town I first discovered 17 years ago. But having moved from London to a rural location in the UK and lived there for 5 years before early retirement, I knew I needed to be away from but near enough to a town that provides for my interests and likes, and luckily Hua Hin does that!

When I first moved to Thailand, I was based in Korat at my other half's house, because that's where she worked and lived. It was great at first for the novelty factor of living somewhere else and I knew the city from old in any case, but it soon began to lose it's attraction for various reasons. Luckily, the other half's work took her to Bangkok and based on that and her visits to Hua Hin with me, (she already knew Cha am well) it was agreed to buy a place here.

Not really fully based here yet, but the balance is gradually shifting. She keeps a small condo in Bkk, so I get my fix of town, city and the quiet life which suits me just fine.